Shame on you

DEVOTION

GENESIS

SHAME ON YOU

Gen 3:6-7

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

NIV

How can something so bad be so good? When God put the man in the garden he gave him only one thing he was not supposed to do. One command to resist one thing, the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and he told him if he ate the fruit from that tree he would die. Did Adam not enjoy living? Was his life that terrible that he would do something to cause his death? Did he not understand the concept of death? Surely in those times when God walked with him in the cool of the day, he explained all about life and death. Maybe he even told him about Lucifer and his actions in heaven. Surely Adam must have explained to the woman God made for him all that the Lord God had told him, especially about that tree. She knew of its nature, what would happen if she was to eat from it. She knew the name of the tree and that it would give the knowledge of good and evil, although she had no idea what evil was except perhaps it was the opposite of good, which is the definition of the Hebrew word used for evil, or bad. Yet here is the temptation. “Did he really say you would die?” Sure, he doesn’t want you to be as wise as he is. She looked at the tree, maybe for the first time. Maybe Adam told her not to even go near that tree. But here she was, near it and now looking with a longing in her heart as she saw it was good for food and it was pleasing to her eye and it would gain her wisdom. How can something so bad be so good? When we think about sin, for the most part it looks good, it is pleasurable, and it offers us something we do not have, or that we want. She was not thinking about the consequences of her actions, she only thought about how good it looked and what she would gain. This is the deceptive scheme Satan used on her and it is the same old scheme he uses on us. It might seem there could be a slight difference between us and that women in the garden. We already have the knowledge of good and evil. True it is because of her, but nevertheless we know evil and at the time of her temptation she did not. We know that when we are enticed it is because of our own evil desires as James tell us.

James 1:13-15

13 When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

NIV

Did the woman already have evil desires? It would seem not, but we cannot really be sure. However when she saw how good it was, she succumbed to the temptation and took some of the fruit and ate it. Now here comes the really bad part, she gave some to the man as well. Not only did she disobey the command of God, but she tempted her mate to disobey as well. Yes, he ate it. What was he thinking? He knew the command of God, he know he was not supposed to eat the fruit from that tree. Why did he? Did the Serpent tempt him the same way? Did the woman tempt him with the same words the devil used on her? We are not told, all we know is she gave some to the man that was with her. Was he with her while she was being tempted by the serpent? The wording could be seen in that manner, or it could also mean the man who was with her in the garden. Adam could have been somewhere else, not directly at her side when she was tempted as it was her that was tempted not the both of them. Nevertheless when she presented him with the fruit he ate it. Did she tell him it was from that tree? Was her eyes open to the knowledge of good and evil before she gave it to him? Did he think that because she ate that now she was going to die, and because he loved her so much he could not bear to see her die without him? We know absolutely nothing about why she gave it to him or why he ate of it, but the fact is she did and so did he when they both knew that were not supposed to. It would seem we do the exactly the same thing. We do things we know we should not, yet we still do them. The list of those things we do that we are not to do is too long to list, yet we know them by heart. We are aware of our failures, our sin, and we are aware of what God has commanded us to do and not to do. They had no shame before eating from that tree, now because their eyes were opened to the knowledge of good and evil they felt shame because they were naked. Who was going to see them? They were all alone. Yet shame, guilt were in their hearts. This is the effects of sin, along with death. For this reason God sent his Son to die for our sin, for our shame, our guilt. Because of Jesus we have been declared innocent. We should not feel the shame and the guilt, but Satan comes and tells us we are guilty we should be ashamed of ourselves, we have disobeyed God.  But that does not mean we should just freely go in sinning either.

Rom 6:1-3

6:1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

NIV

There is a difference in living in sin and sin. We can never be totally without sin, we cannot be perfect in every way, if we could we would not need the blood of Jesus to cover our sin. But to live in sin, we would reject his blood and go on our merry way fulfilling our every desire to please ourselves. This we do not do, we make every effort to live a life that is pleasing to God, but we fail at times and continue to seek his forgiveness under the blood of Jesus. Did the man and woman seek his forgiveness? This we will find out next.  We know they now knew the difference between good and evil and they felt shame and covered themselves, hiding their intimacy from each other. This is something we cannot afford to interfere in our relationship with our mate. We cannot hide our intimacy, not just in the flesh, but in our hearts, our spirits. We must not allow shame to be a cloud over our lives. We see signs that say, “No fear” but we need that sign. “No shame”. No one should be allowed to say, “Shame on you”.